Preparing to Build an Accurate City

[Jacob Rock 0]

After uploading the greyscale image of a region to the game, what would be the next step to creating a model of an existing real-life city? I've found that Google Maps provides an excellent satellite view, but i was wondering if anyone else used other resources for ingredients such as mass transit, education & health care systems, electric & water systems, sanitation, etc.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

-Matt

[ExiL3 10]

I wouldnt care too much about any underground systems, since they are not really that important.. (if your not into the

[Amerikaner 42]

if your doing a large enough city...go to there website lookup there public transportation site...go to the airport site...any gov site would probably be very helpful and full of useful maps

[patriots_1228 51]

what city we talkin about? the thing i would suggest is take some time to study a neighborhood before you build it. I have restarted the Back Bay in Boston thousands of times because i havn't done enough research type stuff .

[PennDOTguy 5]

Maps help. If you can't do google earth, a good old fashioned Rand McNally Atlas will work too (plus, it's a great source for names.)

[jmjselect 0]

I found that if you zoom out in google maps it'll highlight some of the important roads(major surface streets) and get rid of the white lesser important roads. I make those major streets avenues in the game.

I also zoom out to get the same scale and super impose the google maps ontop of a picture of the region(with city edges on). that way you can get a better picture of where those roads are gonna be going(especially curve.)

[trev1b 0]

how do you super impose a map onto a region? and how do you get it to be the same scale?

[Casual Criminal 0]

Hah... I happened on this article by coincidence but I live in between philly and trenton. The pic of the 'Makes' bridge made me laugh. The hardest thing I found to do was determine the proper way to zone a RL city because theres no way to tell.

[lucky7 73]

Hello Jacob Rock,

congrats on making replica of real cities! Well, first off, it's very, very, very time- consuming, however, you'll get great results!

What I can really recommend is www.mapquest.com. Just enter the city you want to build, then go for the specific map the programm asks you. Just zoom in. I realized that on zoom- factor 4 the measures are nearly equivalent to the sc4 grid (thus 16x16m). Be aware that in most cases you'll have to add one xtra tile to the measures in mapquest to be at 98% accurate to the game.

I do it like this:

1st: zoom in on level 4

2nd: select the area you want

3rd: take a picture (I do it with the imageshack quick tool)

4th: take it to f.ex. Irfan View

5th: print it

uuhhh.. I know, it's exhausting

6th: go back to mapquest

7th: go to zoom- level 2

having this, you'll see how the streets are really laid out, f.ex. if it's a one way road, etc.

8th: put arrows on the printed map to see how the streets are going

9th: start!!!!!- and make sure, you know where a right angle on the map is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Even though the game is very limited when it comes to building streets/ roads etc. you can get good results when playing around a bit..!

Another tip I can give you to build "obviously" straight roads off- angle is the following:

get the starting point of the road and also its ending- point as "reference points". Then- it sounds really weird-, but it works- get a sheet of paper connecting these points putting it on (!!!) the screen, having a straight line. Then, mark the line with one- tile- street- markings at the edge and then build a road connecting the points!! Voilá, here's a straight road off- angle!!!!!!

Have fun and take care,

lucky7